This map is from the tmb.net which is the website for the metro system in Barcelona, Spain
This is a map of the metro system in Barcelona, Spain. This map is important to me because I looked at it almost everyday when I was living in Barcelona for 4 months. The map shows the 5 underground metro lines, as well as the trains to and from the airport and out of the city. Out of all the places I visited in Europe with underground systems, this was one of the easiest. The lines are identified by number or color and the names of stops and connections are clearly marked. There were also many of these maps in each car of every train. I find it interesting that some of the names of stops are of neighborhoods above or nearby streets while others are the names of other cities nearby in Spain. I lived in Les Corts and took the green line to Catalunya which is the center of town and also the name of the region in which Barcelona is in Spain. Although it is easy to navigate through the lines, I found it confusing that the gray and dark blue lines are not labeled clearly. The gray line goes to the airport and can only be caught at a few stations and I never found out what the dark blue line was for. While this might not be the most detailed or complex map, I found it very useful in my time abroad and it made me realize how desperately LA could use a better public transportation system.
This is a map of annual precipitation in the US from www.watercache.com
I decided to look up this map to prove something that I always thought was an over exaggeration. I'm from Seattle, WA and I never thought it was actually the wettest place in the US because I never found it difficult to live there and in fact love living there more than southern California, despite the rain. As it turns out, the small area surrounding Seattle is actually in the range of 40-50 inches, much like most places on the east coast and in the mid west. On the Washington peninsula and places a bit further inland then Seattle, there are spots where it hits 160+ inches, as well as places in Oregon and Northern California. While Seattle gets a fair amount of rain, where I live, in the city, there isn't nearly as much and people think. We get 3 straight months of summer with very little or no rain and don't have to deal with huge snow storms or heat strokes like people farther east. What I do find interesting about this map is how much more precipitation there is on the west coast opposed to the east coast. My guess is that precipitation makes for a much more temperate climate but I've always wondered why places on the east coast or in the mid west get such extreme weather while on the west coast we have much more consistent climates throughout the year.
This map is a map of generic soda names or the "pop vs. soda map" in the US found on a strange maps blog at www.beatsdesign.co.uk
I love this map because I'm from Seattle where we call it pop. When everyone is always talking Nor Cal vs. So Cal slang differences, I always throw in pop which everyone always thinks is crazy. What i was really interested to see is that most of the South says "coke". Which I never knew people said in general. I know this map wasn't based on that many respondants and there are a lot of places that received no data, but I like the idea of creating maps like this according to census responses. I'm sure a lot of interesting maps could be made by putting together data such as this.
